Welltok, a consumer health activation company, is proudly announcing it won an Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award for its AI-powered chatbot. The awards honor achievements in artificial intelligence (AI) and recognize organizations, products and people who bring AI to life and apply it to solve real problems. Welltok's winning AI solution, Concierge, is a chatbot that helps consumers navigate complicated benefits and health plan information in a conversational, simplified way. Concierge delivers thousands of conversational responses about benefits and healthcare costs for Welltok's clients and consumers. This reduces call volume to health plans, providers and employer benefit managers, and delivers an on-demand personalized experience.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and deep learning are taking the healthcare industry by storm. They are not pie in the sky technologies any longer; they are practical tools that can help companies optimize their service provision, improve the standard of care, generate more revenue, and decrease risk. Nearly all major companies in the healthcare space have already begun to use the technology in practice; here I present some of the important highlights of the implementation, and what they mean for other companies in healthcare. AI, machine learning, and deep learning are already increasing profits in the healthcare industry. For example, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan by 2021, AI systems will generate $6.7 billion in global healthcare industry revenue.

We've talked before about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will likely disrupt things like we've never seen before with some estimates predicting that up to 80% of all service jobs will be impacted. Healthcare is one area where AI is receiving a good chunk of funding. We looked before at one example of an artificial intelligence company called Enlitic that uses machine learning technology to read X-rays better than a human radiologist who makes $286,000 a year on average. There are actually quite a few artificial intelligence companies in healthcare and CB Insights recently identified 65 of them at various stages of funding. Founded just last year, Chinese company iCarbonX has taken in nearly $200 million in funding from investors that include the $200 billion Chinese internet giant Tencent.

IBM sees cognitive computing as the new frontier of computing and is positioning its Watson architecture as the way forward in this new landscape, for both the company and its customers. In a New York event Thursday to launch the organization's new Watson business unit, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty touted the 2011 Watson victory on the "Jeopardy" game show as nothing less than a harbinger of a new era in computing. Today we are in the "programmable era" of computers, in which all the possible actions that a computer can take must be programmed in advance, she explained. In contrast, Watson is "a new species," Rometty said. Watson "is taught--it is not programmed. It runs by experience and from interaction. By design, it gets smarter over time and gives better judgments over time," Rometty said.

A company that develops Software as a Service to help consumers navigate health insurance options is rolling out a new solution that uses machine learning and the computing capabilities of IBM Watson. Welltok is offering its Virtual Benefits Agent, developed by its Applied Cognitive Computing Practice. The company says the solution that addresses the majority of health coverage and preventative care questions before they reach a customer service representative, presenting health plans with the potential to save millions of dollars. The Virtual Benefits Agent was created by Welltok's Applied Cognitive Computing Practice, which applies proprietary technologies, IBM Watson and expertise to solve complex healthcare challenges. Recently, the team worked with a major national health plan, building on an existing framework and leveraging available content, to expedite development of the Virtual Benefits Agent capability.

We've talked before about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will likely disrupt things like we've never seen before with some estimates predicting that up to 80% of all service jobs will be impacted. Healthcare is one area where AI is receiving a good chunk of funding. We looked before at one example of an artificial intelligence company called Enlitic that uses machine learning technology to read X-rays better than a human radiologist who makes 286,000 a year on average. There are actually quite a few artificial intelligence companies in healthcare and CB Insights recently identified 65 of them at various stages of funding. Founded just last year, Chinese company iCarbonX has taken in nearly 200 million in funding from investors that include the 200 billion Chinese internet giant Tencent.

We've talked before about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will likely disrupt things like we've never seen before with some estimates predicting that up to 80% of all service jobs will be impacted. Healthcare is one area where AI is receiving a good chunk of funding. We looked before at one example of an artificial intelligence company called Enlitic that uses machine learning technology to read X-rays better than your average radiologist who makes 286,000 a year on average. There are actually quite a few artificial intelligence companies in healthcare and CB Insights recently identified 65 of them at various stages of funding. Founded just last year, Chinese company iCarbonX has taken in nearly 200 million in funding from investors that include the 200 billion Chinese internet giant Tencent.

It sounds like the punchline from a joke. A law firm has hired the world's first artificially intelligent lawyer. According to Futurism, the lawyer has been named Ross. Ross was built on IBM's cognitive computer, Watson. IBM describes Watson as "a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data."